1. The claim that Horkheimer
developed the theoretical orientation of the Frankfurt School does not
mean that he is responsible for the philosophical and theoretical
orientations of all of the Institute's individual members. Such a
strong claim would be false; for example, it is clear that figures
such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse independently developed
their own philosophical perspectives (though it is also
uncontroversial to hold that those various figures influenced one
another). Also, the claim should not be understood as entailing that
all of the collaborative studies produced by the Institute live up to
the methodological standards described in Horkheimer's early
works. There is good reason to think that this is not the case, for
example see Wiggerschaus 1994, pp. 149–156 on the difficulties the
Institute had with integrating empirical and philosophical elements in
the Studies on Authority and the Family. The relevant point
here is just that one can reconstruct out of Horkheimer's early works
a kind of program that was supposed to have oriented the overall work
of the Institute, and which did broadly guide its work in the early
period.

2. The German word that is
translated as “compassion” is
“Mitleid,” which could alternately be translated
as “pity,” “sympathy,” or “mercy.” “Mitleid” is often rendered as
“pity” in translations of Horkheimer's works; see, for example,
Horkheimer 1947a, especially throughout Excursus II. “Pity” is also
sometimes used in secondary discussions of Horkheimer's thought (see
for example Stirk 1992). “Compassion,” rather than “pity,” is being
used here for three reasons. First, it is in keeping with the
translation of “Materialism and Morality” being referred to in
§2.1. But “compassion” is perhaps also preferable because it is
a common term to use in English discussions of the kind of moral
sentiment Horkheimer is discussing. Also “pity” often carries, in
everyday English, a negative connotation that is not intended in
Horkheimer's thought.

3. It must be noted, though,
that the object of critique in each case is a bit different. In
“Notes on Science and the Crisis,” for example, it is clearly the
sciences themselves that are being critiqued. When “positivism” is
being critiqued, though, it is a philosophical theory—a theory about
the sciences—rather than scientific practice itself that is under
attack. In many cases, this distinction is not clearly drawn, perhaps
because it is taken for granted that the sciences actually behave a
manner that is consonant with the positivist conception. It is also
worth noting that Horkheimer was perhaps not entirely fair in his
assessment of logical positivism; see, for example, O'Neill and Uebel
2004.

4. The the exact division of
labor in the authorship of Dialectic of Enlightenment is a
matter of some scholarly dispute. For their own part, the two authors
attest that they wrote the entire work in a fully collaborative
fashion; a preface to a reissued edition notes that “no one who
was not involved in the writing could easily understand to what extent
we both feel responsible for every sentence” (Horkheimer 1947a,
p. xi). The editor's afterword to the 2002 English edition of the
work stresses that this claim was not made solely for “external
considerations,” and cites as evidence a letter from Adorno to
Horkheimer which notes that “every sentence belongs to us
both” (Schmid Noerr 2002, pp. 219-220). But it can be argued on
various bases that the authorship of different parts can be divided.
For example, the fact that some draft chapters appear in the collected
papers of one of the authors but not the other might suggest divided
authorship (much more information on this point can be found in Schmid
Noerr 2002). Also, one might point to supposed internal stylistic
differences; this is notably argued by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas
further claims that Adorno's wife confirmed to him the view,
“which is at any rate obvious to careful readers,” that
the first chapter (“The Concept of Enlightenment”) and
Excursus II (on de Sade) were primarily Horkheimer's work, while other
parts (most notably the chapter on the culture industry) were written
by Adorno (Habermas 1993, 57). Of course, there is no necessary
contradiction between the notion that the authorship was collaborative
and the possibility that one of the authors initially drafted a
particular part.

5. Per the critique of the
emphasis on usefulness, American pragmatism receives harsh criticism
in Eclipse of Reason (especially pp. 29-39). It is outside
the scope of this entry to fully discuss Horkheimer's views on
pragmatism. It has been forcefully argued that Horkheimer
misconstrued the thought of the classical pragmatists; see, for
instance, Joas 1993 (especially chapters 3 and 4). Joas is extremely
critical of Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School more generally. Joas
argues, among other things, that Horkheimer largely relied on
Scheler's (also, in Joas's view, mistaken) interpretation of the
pragmatists, but the footnotes and quotes in Eclipse suggest
that Horkheimer did a fair amount of work with the primary texts.
Nonetheless, Joas is surely right to argue that Horkheimer was not the
best interpreter of the pragmatists. Pragmatism and critical theory
are not, one must add, necessarily at odds; see, for example, the
essays in Aboulafia 2002.

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